


Road to Hell

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Series: FlashVibe Week Summer 2016 [7]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dark, M/M, villains au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7892350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco dreams.</p><p>He dreams in blue light. Of yellow lightning and a black suit. He dreams of blue goggles and the ground turning to dust with a simple flick of fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road to Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Day 7: Villains AU!
> 
> Last day :) Man, it's been a fun week! Another dark one.

Cisco dreams.

They aren’t of Earth-1 because—they _aren’t._ They can never be.

They aren’t of Earth-2, either, because Barry Allen was never a speedster there.

Wherever the hell they were from, Cisco doesn’t know, and he has no intention of finding out. He just wants them to stay the hell away from him. Of course, like everything’s he’s ever wanted in his life, the exact opposite happens.

He dreams of black.

He dreams in blue light. Of yellow lightning and a black suit. He dreams of blue goggles and the ground turning to dust with a simple flick of fingers.

There was never any secret identity to keep in that place. The particle accelerator explodes. Barry falls into a coma for nine months, just like he did in Cisco’s own Earth. But in this one, Cisco’s powers start manifesting earlier. Like much, much earlier. And maybe that’s what made everything so different.

He still worked at Star Labs. He still locks Ronnie in the particle accelerator. Everything goes the same except for the parts where it doesn’t.

The explosion had knocked him out and he wakes up to an earthquake and visions he can’t control. The visions make him pass out, or maybe just moves his consciousness to a different universe, and that Cisco begins dreaming as well. That Cisco dreams of worlds and universes and different times in the same blue tinged light.

He dreams for a lot longer.

In this universe, the army is a lot more powerful, and a lot more ruthless. The same Eiling, but for some reason, his pragmatism had grown into outright hate. He doesn’t like things being out of his control, and the metahumans, well they’re just about as out of control as it could get. It doesn’t take long for them to find him.

They find him in the rubble of Star Labs. He wakes up from the dreams or visions or nightmares to a cold bed and a bare room. They shave of his hair and take his clothes away. They give him hospital scrubs and put a plastic bracelet with a number on it around his wrist. They tell him that he was the only survivor of Star Labs. (Cisco—both of them. The one who dreams of this world and the one who’s had to survive in it — knows it’s his fault.)

  
  


  
  


  
  


It’s their superhero origin story, the Cisco who is dreaming supposes. Only the Cisco and Barry there are about as far from heroes as it could get, and if the Cisco who dreams begins thinking of what happened as an origin story then—

Origin means a beginning. A beginning to a story that didn’t happen to them, but a beginning nonetheless. If things had gone a little differently, if things become a little more or less twisted then… If they make a few wrong choices, it could still trigger that origin. If they were in any state other than they are now, that could mean that they’d be in that other story.

Origin means a beginning to a story that could have been theirs. A story that can still be theirs because they’re the same characters. Just in a slightly different setting. That’s the thing with parallel universes, anything is a possible outcome. Anything. And if the Cisco who dreams begin thinking of what they became as a possibility instead of a fantasy brought about by too much caffeine and not enough sleep, well…

He might just take those last few steps towards crazyland.

  
  


  
  


  
  


The Barry from that world still takes nine months to wake from his coma, but there, only Cisco is waiting for him.

He’s not anyone but Cisco, or subject 20, for the army. He’s not Vibe because that name is for the Cisco who dreams; for someone with bright smiles and Princess Bride references and this Cisco’s lost that the first month in. He isn’t Reverb either; that Cisco had been cold and calculating, developing a particular hunger for power that comes from feeling powerless for too long. This Cisco isn’t power hungry, just powerless. And angry. Very angry.

Besides, it’s not as if the army would have let any Cisco from any universe actually pick a cool name.

This is how Barry first meets Cisco: locked in a three by five room with two cots. This is what the army didn’t think of when putting a speedster and a guy who can manipulate the vibrations of the universe in the same room together, and exactly what Cisco had been expecting. He’s angry, but more than anything, he wants out. Barry is his way out.

They put Cisco in gloves that prevent him from accessing his powers whenever they aren’t experimenting on him. What they didn’t know was the few moments they give to Cisco to perform tests on him can be extended to an eternity. An eternity of seeing every possible future and every possible way to get there. Slowly—painfully slow—Cisco learns how to control his power.

Okay, so maybe he was a bit calculating. It was hard not to be, with the power he was given.

It hadn’t taken long to convince Barry to get him out of the gloves—thank God for his hero complex. Or maybe not, considering what happened after. It takes less time to convince them to break out of the base. Executing the idea had taken a lot longer.

First, Barry had to understand his power, and neither of them had the time they needed. The experiments were terrible, and left the both of them exhausted and drained. No time for practice or doing things for the fun of them. No time for either of them to push themselves past their comfort zones.

Another problem: the speed. Restraining a speedster is hard but possible. If Cisco wants to get out, he needs to make it impossible.

There are two simple ways to restrain a speedster: either make them slow enough to keep up with them, or put them somewhere with a material with a frequency short enough wavelength to make it impossible for the speedster to phase through. There’s an easy answer to both: more speed. After all, slow on someone really fast is still really fast. And if it’s a chemical, then more speed theoretically means he’ll burn through whatever substance they put in him before it even has the chance to take effect. The other is simple physics; vibrate fast enough and there’s no wavelength short enough to stop you.

The army opts for the second option since the first interferes with their experiments. And it was also the army who had been kind enough to provide the solution.

Velocity, Barry had told him. The army had been injecting him with chemicals to make him faster. Only in small amounts for some reason. Less than a milliliter every few weeks.

It makes Barry faster but still not fast enough to escape. Cisco has a plan but it’s a risk. He doesn’t know what will happen if they do it.

Barry tells him to do it anyway.

All they need is one vial, Cisco tells him. One full vial that will be injected directly into Barry. It should give him enough speed to phase through the walls. One burst of speed and it will be over in less than a second.

That was the plan, anyway.

The Velocity that the army was injecting him was making him faster. Slowly, but surely. In time, he’ll be fast enough for that one burst of speed they need.

It takes them another eight months before the opportunity arrives. Thankfully, the escape goes smoothly after that.

‘Escape’ might be too light a word. Barry speeds through the entire facility and destroys every single piece of equipment they have. He drives a hand through the team of scientists who experimented on him. He steals their entire stock of Velocity.

Cisco presses a hand to the ground and the entire building turns to rubble. Eighteen months of experiments have burned away any sort of kindness or guilt he may have once had.

They run far, far away.

At first, Cisco was just glad to get out. To be able to breathe fresh instead of stale air again. At first, Cisco was almost ready to let go of his anger.

They were both angry and they were both hurt but fighting is hard and exhausting. They were both tired, as well.

But then he and Barry discover the world they live in and the anger comes in full force.

  
  


  
  


  
  


The problem with The Flash being out of commission is that The Flash is out of commission. There’s no one to take care of the random villains who turn up in Central City and chaos has a way of causing chaos. The Flash arrives eight months too late. When he does, Central City makes Starling look positively tame.

There’s nothing left for them when they come back. Joe and Iris are gone, after supposedly trespassing on government property. They both know why they were there. Barry cries for days and Cisco holds him. It’s the first time in months that he’s felt anything close enough to sympathy for another human being that isn’t tinged in blue light. He hadn’t known Joe and Iris but that doesn’t matter. He can feel Barry’s pain.

His own family is gone as well. That’s what happens when you fill a city with crazed metahumans with anger issues and no one capable of stopping them: innocent people die.

The Cisco who is dreaming wonders if it would have changed anything, if their families had survived. If they would have been able to hold them back or drain some of the anger away. Or if the path that the Barry and Cisco of this Earth took is inevitable.

(He likes to think that it’s the first one but can’t stop the nagging in his mind that it’s the second.)

The city has no place for them, either. Harrison Wells dies in the particle accelerator explosion—or Eobard Thawne. The Cisco who dreams never quite figured that one out—but someone else goes and makes the metahuman detecting watches. People take to them, understandably enough, but Cisco is bitter about it nonetheless. He and Barry can’t go down to a friggin’ store to buy food without the damn things going off.

And Barry… Cisco now knows why the army limited Barry’s intake of Velocity.

Too much, and like any drug, it becomes an addiction. Cisco hadn’t just given him too much—He gave them as much as they could.

  
  


  
  


  
  


It’s three months later when Barry runs out of Velocity. He goes through what can only be described as withdrawal in the most terrifying sense. He’s bedridden for days, and vomits anything that makes it past his throat. Worse, his body vibrates at a dizzying frequency and it’s only Cisco’s power that keeps him from tearing himself apart.

Cisco makes more Velocity.

It isn’t that hard. Barry apparently majored in Chem and he talks Cisco through it in his more lucid moments, and Cisco can make anything if he puts his mind to it. Besides, he can vibe on the past, as well as the future, so he’s pretty much got the recipe covered. Barry needs more Velocity so they make more Velocity. Simple as that.

There’s another reason, the Cisco who is dreaming knows. He sees it in the way this Cisco and Barry look at each other. The way their touches seem to linger for a beat too long.

He pretends that he doesn’t.

The crimes start with Cisco, surprisingly enough. It starts when he still had something resembling enough a conscience and wanted to do something legally. He goes to a lab to buy the chemicals he needs for the Velocity. Those damned watches go off and he was just lucky enough to be in a room full of police officers. They draw their guns the instant the watches go red. They corner him and force him to surrender. All he can think is that he’s not going to be strapped to another one of those medical tables ever again.

Cisco causes an earthquake and runs away. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t regret what he did.

  
  


  
  


They go into hiding, making it damn near impossible to survive.

Barry still needs Velocity. He needs it more and more now, more of it than ever before. He runs faster but he ends up needing more afterwards. Cisco never hesitates in making them. Barry’s the only thing he has left, the only thing he can cling to. The army turned him into this, taken everything that made him Cisco away from him, and destroyed his entire world. Cisco’s not going to lose Barry because of them, as well.

With their powers, their problems are easily fixed. Barry’s fast enough that cameras or sensors can’t detect him. He steals whatever they need, and later, whatever they want. Morality has become relative in Central City, anyway.

Then they go further. They start doing it out of spite. The Cisco who is dreaming doesn’t know why Barry does it—maybe it’s the Velocity tampering with his mind, or maybe he’s turned as hard as Cisco—but he knows why the other him is doing him.

Anger is a really powerful motivator. It’s worse when it’s combined with the entire power of the multiverse. Reverb with his little metahuman band had nothing on this Cisco.

They may have felt guilty about it once. But the world has turned hard (or was it them who did?) and they don’t bother pretending otherwise.

They get revenge. The big, important things, and the petty things. People learn to fear them. They’re not heroes. They don’t have to be picky about who they hurt.

Cisco makes Barry a suit; black for stealth. It makes Barry look bigger and more menacing than he is. The mask has the face of a monster so that no one mistakes him for anything else.

(The Cisco who dreams flinches back when he sees it.)

His lightning remains yellow. He runs faster than anyone can even begin to stop. No one but Cisco hears his own voice anymore. Everyone else hears the reverberating voice of a monster. They hear Barry’s demands as he bends an entire city to his will.

Other speedsters turn up. He’s faster than all of them. It’s like a game, he tells Cisco before he presses their lips together for the first time. A race. Barry has to be the fastest one of all.

Cisco is less well-known, but more feared. Central City has come to dread seeing the man in blue goggles and a leather jacket that sometimes come with the black speedster. The meta who can dissolve buildings with a flick of his fingers. Who can open portals that the worst monsters emerge from. Who seems to know everyone’s next move before they do.

(He doesn’t need the goggles, not really, but they’re a good focusing tool. Besides, he’s still a scientist who can’t resist making a cool costume for himself. The goggles hide his eyes, making him look more menacing than a five four dude with a soft face. If he’s going to be a villain, he could at least look the part.)

(There are worse things. Things people don’t talk about. Everything vibrates at it’s own frequency and both Ciscos can tap into that power. For a month, Cisco went out everyday and people just spontaneously… fell apart.

Think standing right next to someone, hearing a scream, then… finding dust where they once stood.

Cisco had laughed while he did it. No one ever found out why.)

(It was the first thing the army had ‘taught’ him how to do. The woman had been screaming as well when he did it. It felt good to do it to the monster who forced him to learn that particular trick, just like he’d imagined.)

They don’t bother making names for themselves. They aren’t doing this for glory or fame or whatever. They’re not doing this for anyone but themselves. The public does it for them.

(The story behind Barry’s name is a familiar one. Harrison Wells—the one from Earth-2—told it to the Cisco who is dreaming once. Only difference: Barry’s lightning is yellow instead of blue.)

(No one ever agreed on a name for Cisco. The public gave him a lot, but none of them ever really stuck. Cisco never left any survivors in his attacks. If anyone thought about the right name, they took it to their graves.)

  
  


  
  


  
  


They’re unstoppable. That’s what happens when someone who can see the future and someone who can move faster than you can think work together. They could have been great heroes together—they probably were in some other Earth in some other universe. Here, they’re the worst villains imaginable.

Velocity makes Barry unstable, angrier than he normally would have been, and much more cruel. Cisco, well Cisco—

Reverb may preach about becoming gods—they’re certainly powerful enough for it—but there’s a reason he followed Zoom’s orders instead of ruling Central City, or the world, even. Cisco Ramon has never been good at flying solo. He needs people standing by him, or at least tell him what to do.

He’s powerful—more powerful than anyone in this Earth—angry at the world, and fighting with someone who’s angrier.

It’s not a good combination.

Together, they make Central City their own personal playground and its citizen their toys.

The city made them what they are is what they tell each other. Let them suffer for it.

  
  


  
  


  
  


Cisco wakes.

Barry is beside him, breathing evenly. He sleeps like a log most days; exhausted from a day of worrying about Zoom and fighting their meta of the week. Cisco never screams when he wakes from his dreams, anyway. Just lets out a shuddering breath and tries to get his heart to slow down.

Real. This is real. The dreams are dreams, nothing more.

(Except they aren’t. The dreams aren’t dreams in some far off world, they’re real, and if they’re real that means that—)

Cisco stares at the ceiling, heart pounding in his chest. He doesn’t dare close his eyes for fear of another blue tinged vision. He knows he should wake Barry (just like they talked about whenever Cisco was vibing or even just having a plain old nightmare because that was what boyfriends were for) but he remembers the other’s Barry’s crazed eyes. He doesn’t think he can stand seeing the same hazel eyes looking at him in concern at the moment.

It’s not real, he tells himself firmly. And even if it is, it’s in another world away. It shouldn’t matter to him.

He doesn’t wake Barry, just listens to the pounding of his own heart. He stares at the ceiling until morning.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The gloves that the army uses on Cisco was inspired by Daisy's anti-power gloves in Agents of Shields.
> 
> I've had such fun doing this so thanks for everyone who read, kudoed, and commented on my works. You guys are awesome!
> 
> Hit me up on [tumblr](https://daisyetcisco.tumblr.com)if you ever have fic requests or if you just want to talk about these two dorks.
> 
> Ann Rei out.


End file.
